Talking about transgender issues a beginning

Published 2:49 pm, Saturday, April 23, 2016

I am a transgender woman who began her transition almost a year ago. I was trying to bring awareness to the story of Leelah Alcorn, a transgender teenager from Kasich's home state of Ohio who committed suicide in 2014, in part due to being forced by her parents into conversion therapy, a medically-debunked and psychologically-damaging practice that claims to be able to "convert" people who are gay or transgender — that we are somehow "flawed" or "fixable." Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, and the District of Columbia have outlawed the use of conversion therapy on minors.

My question was what President Kasich would do to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth from this dangerous practice.

Every day LGBT youth are subjected to psychological trauma in what should be the safety of their own homes. In some cases, this includes the dangerous practice of conversion therapy.

It is this thinking that leads to the idea that we are inherently evil or unworthy of rights and humanity. It is this thinking that leads to bullying and discrimination against LGBT people. It is this thinking that leads to the murder of transgender people — particularly transgender women of color.

It is this thinking that leads to legal defense tactics like the "trans panic" defense — that murdering a transgender woman is inherently self-defense because she is found to be transgender. It is this thinking that leads to laws such as those recently passed in North Carolina and Mississippi to force transgender people to use bathrooms that don't reflect their gender.

It is this thinking that contributes to the fact that 41 percent of transgender people have attempted suicide. It is this thinking that led Leelah Alcorn to step in front of a truck to take her own life on the morning of December 28, 2014. It is this thinking that led her parents to inscribe her tombstone with "Joshua Alcorn" (Leelah's given name at birth) and refer to her as their "son."

Upon hearing my question, Kasich said he had never heard of Leelah. He proceeded to go into topics such as religious liberties and bakeries and photographers for gay weddings. He said that while he believed in traditional marriage, the Supreme Court had ruled and he was not fighting that ruling, that we need to stop legislating our differences.

When I saw the article in the paper, it was made to seem like I had actually asked a question about marriage equality. In actuality, I asked one that he did not have an answer to.

And that's OK if we don't have an answer right now. I just want to have the conversation.